Could Elpizo be the last host of Sigma's personality? My proof: "I did it! I did it at last! I destroyed X at last!" How could it be an "at last" if he had only known X was the seal for a few hours? Considering that he's compared to Sigma in-game as well... could it be possible?

"At last" more probably refers to his goal: Acquiring theDark Elf. He know that if he wanted to do that, he has to destroy X.

"Few hours"? You seriously don't think the amount of time that passes in real life is the same as time that passes in the story, do you? But yeah, what the above poster said. Dude went through a lot of crap to release the Dark Elf.

I don't think that he's a host (remember, the Sigma Virus had been purged thanks to the Mother Elf), but I would say he's at least sympathetic to Sigma.

X was a prominent public figure (even if just his copy). So much so that Elpizo and every Reploid you meet in the entire series could well be justified in saying that they had "known" X their entire lives. Mega Man X, the ruler of Neo Arcadia and most powerful known reploid, would give cause to anyone to shout "at last." After all, Elpizo had been part of the resistance fighting X.

The Four Guardians have the hots for Zero... and so does X.

I just want to say two things before I start this. First, I hate slash pairings. Second, I'm not a yaoi fan AT ALL. Now that that's out of the way... Could it be that the Four Guardians' attitudes towards Zero, which range from Blood Knight, In Love with Your Carnage, Worthy Opponent, and Yandere, imply that X had feelings for Zero? They are all based on him, after all... Seriously, just think about it. And remember those two things I said at the beginning.

I could agree with you. Heck, this troper even made a WMG about it:

You know, X has many Ho Yay moments with Zero in the X series. And then the Four Guardians are created, using X's DNA as a base. As a result, three of them love fighting Zero. Leviathan got the dominant homogeneous allele, since her expression towards Zero is the most prominent among her siblings, and not to mention her being blue, like her "father". Fefnir and Harpuia got the heterogeneous alelle, and Phantom got the recessive homogeneous one, since he isn't too interested in fighting Zero.

Just to add more fuel to this, if the Mega Man Network Wiki is to be believed, the MMZ Collection site reveals that the Four Guardians aren't just based on X's DNA, they're based on part of his soul. Explanation Apparently, when X sealed the Dark Elf, the shock spilt his soul into five Cyber-Elves. Four of them were used to create the Guardians, and the last one became the Elf-X we see in the games.

The same thing occurred to me, but I prefer not to think about it for the same reasons as the original troper. If we want to go that route, though, X's moments with Zero were never that... violent. And Leviathan is female. What part of X's soul did she get?

This different troper tries to explain it: Leviathan's "soul" is probably also male, but then she ended up in a female body. (Can qualify for The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body, but there's no clear evidence for that.) Nobody knows why they use a female body, though. The violence is because she (and her fellow Guardians) only knows Zero as their enemy at first. Alternatively, X's pacifism holds out those violent "passions"; since he was split into 5, the emotions are separated. His original gentle and pacifist self (as well as his own memories) becomes the Elf X, while his "hidden selves" become the Guardians.

Memory can play a part in shaping souls. If the manga is to be believed, then Leviathan is the part of X's soul that consists of his memories about Marti. Think about it, both are aquatic reploids who wield a polearm and love to tease the main characters.

Leviathan inherited X's childish aspects. According to the MMZ wikia, Leviathan doesn't particularly enjoy violence that much, but she thoroughly enjoys fighting Zero, being very playful about it, as if their battle is a game. Word of God states that one of the biggest regrets of the development team was that they didn't adequately flesh out Leviathan's (and to a lesser extent Fefnir's) personalities.

There's a pretty easy explanation for that — they are reploids, robots without programmed gender, and thus whether they are "male" or "female" depends on their bodies (since others would expect those in male bodies to be men and those in female ones to be women). So it is a case of The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body, but a justified one, and to be honest, there are many humans who behave the way they do purely because others expect them to, so it's not like it was pulled out of the ass. And besides, it's not like their love has to be romantic. Good friends "love" each other too, though they won't admit it loud.

X and Zero already behaved like a gay couple in the X series, so there's no big change...

This is why Zero no longer inhabits his original body. For whatever reason, the original Zero was killed. They were incapable of bringing back the original mind, so they instead opted to make a perfect replica of Zero's personality. It succeeded.

Weil wasn't always evil.

Let's check the manual: The humans feared that the Maverick Wars would happen, so he created the Project Elpizo, a project to create a Reploid to be a perfect ruler (the function of Omega) by using the Mother Elf's program rewriting ability to control all Reploids in the world, avoiding them becoming Mavericks. Sounds like a good idea, right? note Note that X was against the project, as there was confrontation between the philosophies of coexistence and leadership. But as he said himself in the game, "The joy of ruling all that you see... Only a human could possibly understand!" And, considering of the nature of the project (Brainwashing for the Greater Good), put the two together and... With Great Power Comes Great Insanity — he then Jumped Off The Slippery Slope and instigated the Elf Wars. And as he pointed out (and as the Caravan shows us), the most other humans are actually Not So Different from him — they all want to end all the Maverick problems, and they think that Reploids are Just Machines and must submit to the humans' will. To sum it up, he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist (heck, his methods weren't that extreme), but then he crossed the Moral Event Horizon by creating the war in the first place.

Wily has long since given up trying to make Zero have a Heel-Face Turn.

Think about it: Zero is the beloved hero of the planet, and the legendary Reploid. He ends up saving the planet. At this point, he's eclipsed Mega Man X. Much of what motivates Wily's actions is trying to one-up Dr Light, which he's successfully managed. At this point, Wily is probably quite proud at what Zero has done. Given the "Wily and Master Albert are the same person" theory, he doesn't even need Zero to conquer the world.

Omega is not an original consciousness created by Weil, but rather the personification of the Zero Virus. So technically he is Zero, in a sense.

When Zero's consciousness was removed from his body for the purpose of studying the virus in his body before the Elf Wars, the Zero Virus took over and decided to follow Wily's original programming, and as a result went on a rampage. Weil, in the illusion of peace, created an armor that would suppress Zero's original body and all of its horrible powers and was granted the right to continue the virus research. When the time arrived, Weil released the Zero Virus, now named Omega, which corrupted the Mother Elf into the Dark Elf and started the Elf Wars. The possibility that Omega is the Zero Virus is supported by the fact that his presence warps reality and merges the real world with Cyber Space like the Zero Virus did in the X Series; that can't be a coincidence. The Zero we play as in the Mega Man Zero series is the original mind of Zero that Wily created, but with none of the viral programming that made him the Maverick that Sigma encountered. From this point of view, Omega is Zero in the sense that he is the original viral program that Wily intended to release upon the world, but our protagonist is also Zero because he is the same one we played as in the X series. Neither is a copy as far as the mind is concerned, both Zeroes are pieces of each other. Zero's eventual defeat over Omega Zero in every sense of the word purges him of the past; the horror of the virus that had caused all the wars he had fought and Wily's legacy were all personified in the foe before him.

Left open to interpretation. In official commentary for the Zero series, Makoto Yabe (Scenario Writer) and Ryota Ito (Series Director) have a discussion about the nature of Omega's origins. Makoto Yabe explains that Omega's personality was certainly programmed by Weil to be his personal messiah that would help him rule the world, but expresses doubt that Weil created Omega's mind. Ryota Ito then chimes in by saying that the original storyboard idea for Omega was that Zero's original body still contained the Maverick programming created by "a certain doctor who has tried to take over the world innumerable times before" (obviously Wily), and that said side of Zero's personality took over control of the original body once Zero's mind was removed from it. However, he states that since they don't discuss the issue in the actual game itself, the fans are welcome to come to whatever conclusion they want to.

There are actually three Zero personalities .

In the X series, Zero had two sides: The Zero that fights for the Maverick Hunters and The Zero that infected. However there's a third personality: the mindless loyal soldier. Let's call them Zero, 0 and Omicron respectively. Originally, Zero was meant to be a combination of Zero and Omicron, however a defect in his program led to 0 being dominant. Thanks to Sigma, Zero became the dominant personality. After Zero entered a clone body, Dr Weil felt this was the perfect opportunity to have Omnicron the main personality...however while dominant, the 0 personality was still there and influenced Omicron, resulting in Omega: a God of Destruction with the insane soul of 0 and the loyal mind of Omicron. [[Sadist Being Dr Weil]], this was a great combination and led to the Elf Wars.

Zero knew all along about the connection between the guardians and X.

Only subconsciously, though. It explains why they are the only antagonists that Zero never kills throughout the series (Phantom killed himself). Zero sensed the connection between them and X, thus when confronted with them, Zero chose to drive them off rather than destroy them. Even when Harpuia was pleading for Zero to Mercy Kill him, Zero sought to save him.

When facing Copy X, Zero tells him that while the majority of his memories of the past are gone, he seems to remember that the original X was much stronger than his Copy is. He also praises the original X as someone who was his friend and whom he knows was much more noble than the current reploid in front of him who has taken on his name. I would say it is certainly plausible that Zero has a sense that the Guardians are similar to X and only fought them because they were in his way; for example, back in Mega Man X5, Zero fought X even though he considered him his best friend.

Zero was a Maverick the whole time.

And not in the corrupt Neo Arcadia Dystopia style of twisting the usage of the word to persecute innocent reploids either, but in "the bad ending of X5" way. Ciel is Dr. Wily's great great (etc) grand daughter, and when she discovered ancient blueprints of his master creation, she decided to seek it out. Zero's mind is so distorted though that he sees pure evil as good, and honest benevolence as something to destroy. Thus Neo Arcadia actually IS a utopia, the X we all know and love is in charge, and he is greatly pained to see his long-lost friend has resurfaced as a mindless killing machine used as a mere weapon by the descendant of his forebear's nemesis. This, of course, means the Cyber Elf X that Zero knows is actually the Obi-Wan style AI ghost of Dr. Wily the same way Dr. Light was for X in his series. And Dr. Wile is actually a Dr. Light spirit-infused robot body that is created in desperation to bring back X when he was first destroyed, which is why from Zero's perspective he seems to be irredeemably evil: because in his twisted Maverick mind, the ultimate figure of good is the type of person who gleefully skips across the Moral Event Horizon. Of course, even this act of pure desperation isn't enough, and in the end X destroys himself after being defeated by his friend again rather than endure more senseless fighting. Unfortunately, this drives Dr. Light into desperation to bring back the original Zero body, and again since our Zero sees it as a mindless figure of unending destruction, in reality Omega probably was the closest thing to our old Zero that we knew and loved. This would also mean the 4 Guardians were originally stalwart figures of peace, but secretly resented being built for combat and never having a war to fight outside of poultry Maverick outbreaks, so when Zero was awakened, they found true meaning in combat and ultimately turned against their master, though never sinking so low as to side with that vile spawn of Wily we know as Ciel. And Elpizo was probably this series equivalent of Dr. Doppler in X3 or something. Obviously, this theory implies copious amounts of Brain Washed And Crazy (of a sort) {{I Know You're In There Somewhere Fight}}s against X, the good guys having to choose the Lesser of Two Evils in their fight against the Red God of Destruction Wily created by turning Neo Arcadia into a strict police state to protect its citizens which leads to Zero 4, and in the end an obvious The Bad Guy Wins and You Have Outlived Your Usefulness closing of the series.

I won't delve into some of the details proposed here (because I don't agree with them and it should be left at that). However, the basic premise is true: Zero is a Maverick, and always was a Maverick. He just doesn't like to be the reason for destruction and deaths, and due to being built like that from the very beginning (as opposed to becoming a Maverick as a result of the virus' effect) he has enough control to choose not to fight. And it does have to be noted that it is precisely because he is a Maverick that he was able to kill Weil: of the Reploids built before the elf wars, only Mavericks are capable of hurting humans deliberately, so after Weil revealed himself to be a human, a non-Maverick would be stopped from hurting him by their programming.

The reason why he hasn't/didn't starve/bleed/die from shock is due to the orange liquid. It cauterizes all wounds, and functions as an anesthetic (of course, he'd still suffer from the psychological pain). Cybernetics would get rid of the toxins, and generate energy to keep the body from starving/suffocating. The suit would be designed to prevent it from injuring itself, so the metallic limbs can't rip it apart. His tongue was also cut out and replaced by a mechanized one, to prevent him from biting it off to bleed. No wonder Weil was so pissed: He's a mutilated, living corpse unable to eat or breathe. Unable to feel anything. Forever.

I dunno about that; in Zero 4, he got his glass helmet cracked out twice (after he got a direct hit from Ragnarok's laser and later after his first form boss fight), but he still managed to stay alive.

Like I said, everything below the diaphragm, meaning that his lungs are still able to inhale and exhale. Plus they'd be smart enough to prevent liquid getting out of his chest region, so it would presumably shut off when the helmet is broken. That, or the cybernetics have a breathing supply for him. How else would you explain him not asphyxiating before going One-Winged Angel, considering the final stage had the vacuum of space and the Earth as a backdrop?

Or better yet, Weil is just a head or a brain in a jar, and his cybernetic body has programming within it that keeps him from committing suicide. If this picture◊ is anything to go by, even most of his head is robotic.

To be fair, having your closest friends die off one by one in your face can take a toll on a person, and by that point death was staring her down. So, instead of Passy waking Zero with a slim chance of working, she altered Ciel's mind and a nearby Power Suit to cope with the circumstances, creating a Split Personality. When she came back to resistance base, everybody else just played along, adding another PTSD victim to the madhouse.

Thus, in Z2, when Zero was stranded out there? Either Ciel thought he escaped somewhere else when she was teleported, or Ciel's Power Suit was strong enough for atmospheric reentry and Cerveau took over while she was gone. In Z3? Omega could've been a Shape Shifter all along like the newer generation reploids. In Z4? Ciel managed to escape via transport, but she fell into a trance imagining Zero was still fighting Weil.

Then what about the beginning of Z4, where Neige speaks to both Ciel and Zero at the same time and welcomes Ciel while telling Zero to shove off? Schizophrenia for everybody?

Due to Copy X's nature, he was doomed to go crazy.

When Copy X finally meets Zero, he freely admits that he is a copy of the original. But how exactly did he come to this conclusion? Everyone believed him to be the true X, except for Ciel. Imagine how his life would have been ever since he was born; he's activated as a newborn reploid with the experience of a child, but everyone around him believes that he's their beloved X come back to them. Already he's had an impossibly heavy mantle of expectations hefted onto his shoulders before he even really knows what's going on. So he tries to fit into these large shoes and be the 'X' they want him to be — after all, they say he's X, so he must be X, right? But ... he doesn't have any of the memories or experiences of the original X. Eventually, he comes to the only real conclusion; that he's only a copy of the original. His entire life is based on a gigantic lie. If everyone knew the truth, they would abandon him, because he's not the X that everyone loved and respected. He, understandably, suffers a psychotic break. It's at this point that he begins his campaign of iron-fisted rule, because if he can't be the beloved X, then he has no choice but to be better than him in order to earn that love by his own merits. Copy X might be a cruel tyrant, but his upbringing really didn't leave any room for anything but an unstable, emotionally skewed individual.

Well, Harpuia is supposed to be the smartest of the four guardians. Running your bike into oncoming fire, resulting in his untimely demise, didn't seem like a good idea.

Then again, this is the same Harpuia that thought that staring down Omega when it melded with the Dark Elf, giving him enough time to throw several orbs at him, was a good idea.

Be fair, that lightning attack Harpuia used can tear shit up if he manages to hit you with it.

Weil modified Zero's body before he gave it the external armor and installed a new personality

That would explain how Omega's true form looked somewhat differently than Zero's body design we saw in the X series. Zero's new constructed body (that was then used to battle Omega) is likely based on this new design, to match.

Ciel is an expy of Iris

They both have a pacifistic personality, an attraction to Zero, and a familial relationship (of sorts) with a reploid Zero is antagonistic towards. They even have similar haircuts! In fact, you could argue that the resistance as a whole is an expy of Repliforce (falsely accused of being Mavericks, fondness for berets).

They're more like a Repliforce that wasn't guilty of all sorts of ancillary crimes. Let's face it, Repliforce wasn't an innocent puppy. When a military organization is implicated in a major atrocity, refusing to disarm and come in for questioning is the kind of thing that should send up warning signals.

The only thing Repliforce was guilty of was not offering themselves on the chopping block for a crime they didn't commit. The above entries on this very page about the actions of humans in the Zero series makes it a very reasonable point of view on why Repliforce wouldn't trust humans to give them an impartial trial, what was most likely was going to happen if they had peacefully disarmed would be humanity retiring them all without bothering to get proof of them being part of the crime.

Then maybe they should have made that argument, because when a group of heavily armed soldiers who stand accused of (and have witnesses testifying to) destroying an entire city respond to the very reasonable request of coming in for questioning by spouting questionable military philosophy and the flowery military prose equivalent of "you can take our guns when you pry them from our cold dead fingers", one doubts any army in that situation, reploid or human, would be allowed to continue to exist after that. Furthermore, considering that the Zero series happened after over a century of Reploids going on murderous rampages or doing boneheaded stupid things for entirely self-serving reasons, it's probably just as valid to assume that instead of the Zero series being proof that Reploids prior to that era wouldn't be given a chance, but rather not giving Reploids a chance was learned through hard, bloody experience. And considering that Storm Owl proceeded to terrorize the skies and Jet Stingray destroyed a different city, Repliforce doesn't exactly strike me as the kind to try and help their case. For cripes' sake, you're declared Maverick because people think you destroyed a city, and you respond by destroying another city?!?!?

Arguably the Resistance is even worse than Repliforce because they are a group of Reploids openly defying humanity from the beginning. They raid supplies, assault Neo-Arcadian bases, were behind the assassination of Megaman X, and a year later in the case of Elpizo's "Operation Righteous Strike" they attacked a residential area full of civilians as part of an attempted invasion force. The Resistance did the exact same actions that Repliforce did, they refused to surrender themselves, took over territory that didn't belong to them, attacked the Neo-Arcadian Maverick Hunters, and even threatened civilians. The fact that Ceil is their token human doesn't change the fact that they are a group of Reploids fighting against the government of Humanity. They are in every sense of the word Mavericks, only they don't have Sigma manipulating them.

Cyber-Elves are based on virus technology.

They perform similar functions, potentially altering Reploids. However, this is not a bad thing. Gene therapy uses viruses as vectors, so they might use Cyber-Elves in a similar manner.

As Mother Elf was derived from Zero's residual viral readings - a vaccine, so to speak - it's possible that regular elves are similar in nature.

Zero's appearance is due to constantly evolving technology.

When this series first started, a lot of people commented about Zero's new appearance. Capcom gave a rather flimsy explanation for this, stating that this was how Zero always looked, and it's just the art style that makes him appear "different".

If we observe the designs of the main characters in Mega Man X8, they've been slimmed down considerably, from bulkier, heavier frames to more agile, lightweight models. As we can observe from devices that we use in our lives (such as television sets, personal computers, and MP3 players), technology tends to lean towards being more convenient and 'compact' as it evolves. There's no reason not to believe that by the time of Mega Man Zero, the overall designs for reploids eventually did away with the bulky armor and lent themselves towards more human designs.

With that said, as technology progressed, there's no reason not to believe that as Zero's body was worked on, it would have gone through systematic updates and upgrades in the process, to keep up with modern technology. Weil most likely did the same with Omega (Zero's real body), following similar schematics for Zero's duplicate body, as he needed it for more active use during the Elf Wars.

That is why neither Zero nor Omega "look" they way they should — they've been altered to keep up with the times.

First off, the Dark Elf has the ability to transform any robot into a stronger and then monstrous form of itself. Look no further than Elpizo or Omega, for instance. The Dark Elf used to be the Mother Elf, and the manual stated that X used Mother Elf to purge the rest of the Sigma Virus on earth.

Now, onto the theory: the Mother Elf modified X's Ultimate Armornote Because Copy X's armor is similar to the Ultimate Armor, but with different color and additional "wings" and gave it a white and gold color instead of the black and purple one. It also later gave him a seraphic form that was likely to be used only once. After that X became widely known for having that form.

When X went missing to seal the Dark Elf within his inactive body, the "Savior X" later became the template for making Copy X, complete with the extra forms above but without influence from the Mother Elf; this also hypothetically makes Copy X's forms weaker than X's.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy